Kabali Destabilises the

Established Idioms of Tamil

Cinema
Through Rajnikanth’s portrayal of a conscious underclass hero who
understands the nuances of Ambedkar donning a three-piece suit, the
symbol of assertion has entered the Tamil film industry, heralding a major
revolution.

Karthikeyan Damodaran
FILM
26/JUL/2016

No film in the recent past has received the attention like the latest
Rajnikanth-starrer Kabali. Given the actor’s larger than life demigod
status and his commercial value, the success of the film might not be
surprising. With carefully created pre-release posters and teasers, the
film, which revolves around a Tamil indentured labourer who
becomes a don in Malaysia, soared high in the expectation levels
among his fans.

The director, Pa. Ranjith, is a two-film-old rookie, but has already

showcased his ability to portray films that would challenge the
established idioms of Tamil cinema.

With his third attempt, by utilising the superstardom of Rajnikanth,

Ranjith has destabilised the conventional sign systems that have been
constructed in Tamil cinema for long. Through its marked symbolism
previously unfounded in Tamil cinema, Kabali is a trendsetter,
meaning Tamil cinema will no longer be the same.

Most reviews of the film sound shoddy with no element of the

historical analysis of Tamil cinema or an understanding of the
cultural experiences in a largely film-influenced Tamil Nadu.

The Tamil film industry is nothing but an extension of the Tamil

social life, which is marked by the realities of caste and its
hierarchical nature.

Sundar Kaali and Ravi Srinivas, in an article titled On Castes and

Comedians: The Language of Power in Tamil Cinema in Ashis
Nandy’s Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema, say that
Tamil cinema, as a secondary modelling system with highly
developed and conventionalised codes, has over the years evolved
particular modes of representing configurations of caste, class, and
gender. And it comes as no surprise that only a few castes and
occupational categories are represented.

Dalits and some other subaltern groups have become invisible under
this exercise of cultural hegemony. They are either misrepresented or
showcased in a way that justifies their place in the social order as
those of clients in a patron-client relationships.
This cultural invisibility points to the systematic devaluation of
subaltern cultural forms that exist in the world of art and culture in
the Tamil experience. Like all other art forms, films also failed to
incorporate the distinctive experiences that subordinate groups face.

Symbolism in Tamil cinema

One has to contextually place the emergence of cultural production in

the period’s socio-political developments. Throughout the 1950s and
1960s, and up until the early 1970s, Dravidian symbolism and
aesthetics were portrayed in films through its aural-visual
dimensions.

We have seen the images of M.G. Ramachandran, or MGR,

(typically portraying a subaltern hero) reading a book authored by
C.N. Annadurai, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam flag fluttering in a
slum, or the statue of Periyar forming the background when the
protagonist talks about rationalism.

MGR, wearing the colours of red and black up his sleeves, was quite
a common signifier of the Dravidian politics and that he was
following the songs of this era marking Dravidian populismbecame
an effective form of political communication.

This however changed over time, and during the late 1970s and
through the 1980s, with unemployment and rise of labour problem,
films carrying strong intonations of Marxism and anti-establishment
rhetoric saw the emergence of the ‘angry young man’ era, where the
hero was an underclass figure.

This era was marked by symbols depicting Marxist utopia and

colours of red in films like Varumaiyin Niram
Sivappu (1980), Sivappu Malli (1981), Thanikattu Raja (1982), Kann
Sivanthal Man Sivakkum (1983) and Naan Sigappu Manithan (1985).

Though it started in the late 1980s, the trend became more prominent
and visible during the 1990s. This was an era that marked the
emergence of authentic visual markers that projected and propagated
a strong intermediate caste pride.

Films carrying caste titles proliferated mainstream cinema, and it was

Kamal Hassan starrer ThevarMagan (1992) that started the trend.
With a series of films like ChinnaGounder (1992), Nattamai (1994),
Thevar Veettu Ponnu (1992), Periya GoundePonnu (1992), Kizhakku
Seemayile (1993), Mappillai Gounder (1997), Kunguma Pottu
Gounder (2001) and Virumandi (2004), the list of movies with
intermediate caste pride as the subject became quite lengthy.

Film historian Rajan Krishnan says that it was Hassan’s Thevar

Magan that brought the sickle-bearing genre, associating the south
with being represented primarily as a sickle-bearing space.

A series of films, even to this day, continue with such portrayals,

associating southern Tamil Nadu with sickles. This did not happen in
isolation. Who wields the sickle is also important and is associated
with the Thevar Magan subculture, begging the question, against
whom is the sickle used?

It was this contestation that Dalits were becoming the victims, led to
the controversy where Hassan’s planned sequel to Thevar Magan,
titled Sandiyar (Thug) ran into trouble with Puthiya Tamilagam’s Dr.
K. Krishnasamy, who opposed the film saying that it glorified the
sickle culture and would possibly lead to a fresh bout of clashes
between Dalits and Thevars in the southern districts.

The majority of the films during this period portrayed the south not
only as a sickle-bearing space but also as a space carrying a
corresponding mythology of a society based on martial pride and
honour.

References of Thevar icon U. Muthuramalinga Thevar became an

inescapable part of the film’s narrative either through display of
portraits or through statues and songs.

Even though some of the films do not explicitly signify caste, the
everyday markers provide us with an idea of reading it
symptomatically. Here, in most cases, the Dalits or members of the
other caste groups who are lower in the hierarchy are shown to
remain content with a patron, who is naturally a person of justice.

Kabali, a trendsetter

In traditional Indian society, clothing was a marker of status and

power. Clearly defined bodily gestures and clothing were used as a
mechanism to enforce and maintain social divisions within society.
Clothes, like other symbols, were susceptible to multiple
interpretations. As a form of symbolic communication, they were
regulated in the public sphere, thus the lower castes never had any
autonomy over their clothing. What they should wear and how they
should wear it was decided by the dominant castes.

References to politics and power through codes of dress can be found

in Tamil films and are considered to be techniques of display.
Clothing is therefore a powerful way to articulate aspects of the self,
compose identities and assert particular social relationships.

In the films glorifying intermediate caste pride, or examples, in films

like Thevar Magan, Chinna Gounder and Nattamai, the protagonists
can be seen wearing crisp white shirts and veshti, which indicates
their social power and their power to use services castes like
washermen, which are denied to certain castes.

The use of washermen service caste forms the narrative of Chinna

Gounder where the famous comedian duo of Goundamani and
Senthil come in as washermen servicing the Gounder. In another film
by the director of Chinna Gounder, titled Ponnumani (1993), the
same duo is the member of another service caste of barbers providing
service to the village bigwigs at their respective households. In both
the cases the social power of employing service castes by the
dominant castes was projected as a naturalised social order.

In Thevar Magan, where London returned Hassan sheds his punk

hairstyle and modern dress-up to don a traditional crisp white shirt, is
involved in an act of succession to occupy the inherited power and
become the village chieftain after the passing of his father Periya
Thevar. The scene of Hassan getting his hair cut and donning the
white shirt and veshti, sporting a twirled moustache and sitting on the
“chair” is accompanied by a brilliant background score, was among
the most definitive signifiers that indicated that caste power was
being kept intact by the family.

On the other hand, in Kabali, the principal character of the film, in

his British-styled plaid and window-paned suits and stylish
sunglasses, flipping a gun to vanquish his enemies, is a refreshing
change in Tamil cinema.
Although we might have seen other protagonists wearing suits and
wielding guns, Kabali is different. He is an underclass hero who is
conscious of the power of dressing, who knows the politics behind
Gandhi shedding his clothes and Ambedkar donning a three-piece
suit.

The sequence where Rajnikanth says that dressing in suits is a mark

of dissent, a recognised code of self-formation through clothing, is
deployed to upset the denotation of power, status and social location.
In fact, Kabali worshipping the subaltern deity Madurai Veeran while
wearing three-piece suit, is a strong symbolic statement that has
layered meanings of Dalit aspirations and the journey of the
indentured labourer.

This powerful and emotive symbolism attached to Ambedkar, bears

the weight of Dalit aspirations and expectations and the Dalit
investment on Ambedkar’s increasing symbolic value in the last three
decades, in a myriad ways.

This has now travelled to the film world (Kabali) from the socio-
political world, where Ambedkar remains more significant for the
masses through the proliferation of symbols such as Ambedkar
statues, flags, banners and posters.

Much Dalit assertion has indeed rested on symbolism, like the

occupation of space with flags and statues. The symbolic and spatial
importance of the emblems of assertion was a form of social protest,
a counter mobilisation against dominance.

Through Rajnikanth’s portrayal in Kabali of a conscious underclass

hero who understands the nuances of Ambedkar wearing suits, this
symbolism has entered the Tamil film industry as a major revolution,
and one is left yearning to see more.

Karthikeyan Damodaran is pursuing a Ph.D. in South Asian

Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
https://thewire.in/film/kabali-destabilsing-the-established-idioms-of-tamil-
cinema